Home > MARTIN KING SHOT!
Discriminations-Minorit. USA History
As a Result of These Events 39 Years Ago = George W. Bush - Today ?
"A young reporter, a historic event
A firsthand history of King’s assassination.
By Bob Mann
SPECIAL TO THE AMERICAN-STATESMAN
Sunday, April 01, 2007
My city editor in Fort Worth beat me to the phone. I was wrapping up an assignment in Atlanta, and I was going to call and suggest that I fly to Memphis, Tenn., and try for an interview with Martin Luther King Jr. It was April 4, 1968, and King was in Memphis in support of garbage workers striking for better pay.
The city editor was calling with chilling news: "I’m afraid we’ve got Martin King shot in Memphis. Can you get there tonight?" I was bagging socks and underwear before I hung up.
I spent part of my 24th birthday chasing the most compelling story of my young journalism career.
Reaching Memphis was a challenge. Atlanta’s airport was chaotic. Ticketing was stalled. Tears flowed. Possibility of a conspiracy loomed. A man in an airport uniform saw me flashing my press card to get on a plane. "Are you a reporter?" he asked. "A Southern Airways flight is about to taxi. I think I can stop it."
He did. I grabbed a Life magazine because it contained excerpts of King’s "Letter From a Birmingham Jail." I needed to know more about him.
A black man sat in a front row, head down, his cries echoing through the plane. On takeoff, an elegantly dressed white woman moved next to the grieving man. White women sitting next to black men was hardly common in 1968, certainly not in the South. She quietly consoled him.
The rest of us sat silently, sharing a common shame since we’d not done the same. I had my first story.
I finished "Letter From a Birmingham Jail" as we landed for a layover in Tupelo, Miss., home to a buddy from high school. I called, and he roared to the airport.
King’s letter telling fellow clergymen why he could no longer accept the slow pace of the civil rights movement was the most powerful testament for equality I’d ever read, I tried to explain to my pal.
"Robert, he was a . . .